The day following that on which Sydney Campion paid his afternoon visit to his club in Pall Mall was one of considerable importance to his sister Lettice.

She was an early riser, and generally contrived to write half-a-dozen pages of easy translation or straightforward fiction before ten o'clock. That was the hour when she was due in her mother's room, to help her in dressing, and to settle her comfortably in her arm-chair, with her Bible and spectacles at her side, and a newspaper or magazine waiting its turn after the lessons for the day had been read. Mrs. Campion was growing very feeble, both in mind and in body, but she got through her waking hours with a fair amount of satisfaction, thanks to the attention which was paid to all her wants and wishes. Lettice did not suffer anything to interfere with the regular routine which she had marked out for her mother's comfort. She and her maid Milly between them kept the old lady in peace of mind and constant good humor; and if Mrs. Campion still believed that Sydney was their great benefactor, and that it behoved her to comport herself with dignity and grace as the mother of a Lord Chancellor, Lettice did not attempt the hopeless task of undeceiving her.

On this particular day there had been a poor pretence of morning work. She had arranged her papers, the ink and pen were ready to her hand, and a few lines were actually written. But her ideas were all in confusion, and eluded her when she tried to fix them. She could not settle to anything, and instead of writing she found herself drawing figures on the blotting-pad. She knew that of old as a bad symptom, and gave up trying to be industrious. The French window stood open, and the balmy June morning tempted her out into the garden. She picked some flowers for her vases, and pinned a rosebud on the collar of her soft grey dress. It was a simple, straight-flowing dress, of the make which suits every woman best, tall or short, handsome or plain, depending for its beauty on shape and material alone, without any superfluous trimmings; for Lettice had a man's knack of getting her dressmaker to obey orders, and would have scorned to wear and pay for, as a matter of course, whatever trappings might be sent home to her in lieu of what she wanted.

Clearly there were special reasons for her perturbation of mind, and if any other woman had been at her side, and watched her in and out of the house for ten minutes at a time, she would have had no difficulty in divining that Lettice expected a visitor. She would probably go further than this, and draw some confident conclusion as to the kind of welcome likely to be accorded to the visitor; but here, at any rate, the criticism would have been premature. Lettice did expect a visitor—Mr. Alan Walcott to wit; but she had not the slightest notion as to how she should receive him, or whether she would prefer that he should come or stay away.

Her friendship with the poet had grown steadily since their first meeting, and they were now on tolerably familiar terms. His manner had made it impossible for her to doubt that he liked to talk and listen to her, that he sought her company, and even considered himself entitled to her sympathy. But when on the previous day he had gone so far as to assert his title in words, he had done so with what seemed to her remarkable audacity. And, although she had given him permission to come to her house this morning, she was thinking now whether it would not have been better if she had suggested the transfer of the volume of which he spoke at Mrs. Hartley's on the following Sunday, or if she had made her hint still broader by praising the cheapness and despatch of the Parcels Delivery Company.

She had done nothing of this kind. She had been neither rude nor effusive, for it was not in her nature to be either. He was coming "some time after twelve," and in fact, punctually as the clock struck twelve, Mr. Alan Walcott was at the door.

Milly announced him demurely. She observed him carefully, however, as she admitted him into Lettice's room, and studied his card with interest while carrying it to Miss Campion. No man so young and handsome had ever called at Maple Cottage in her time before.

Lettice had been sitting with her mother, and she came down to her study and received her visitor with a frank smile.

"It is really, very kind of you," she said, taking the innocent book which he held out as a sort of warrant for his intrusion, "to be at all this trouble. And this is a splendid copy, it reminds me of the volumes my father used to be so fond of. I will take great care of it. How long did you say I might keep it?"

"Till you have read it, at any rate. Or till I ask you for it again—which I don't think I shall. You say that you used to see volumes like this on your father's bookshelves. I should not wonder if you had seen this very book there. It is a strange coincidence that I should have had it in my possession for some time, and yet never noticed until this morning, when I took it down to bring to you, that it had your name on the fly-leaf. Look!"

He opened the book and held the fly-leaf against the window. The name had been rubbed out with a wet finger, after the manner of second-hand booksellers, but the "Lawrence Campion" was still easily legible. Lettice could not restrain a little cry of delight.

"Yes, that is his dear handwriting, I know it so well! And this is his book-plate, too, and his motto—'Vive ut vivas in vitam Æternam.' Oh, where did you get the book? But I suppose my father's library was scattered all over the country."

"No doubt it was. I have a few—perhaps twenty—with the same plate. My uncle gave me them. I—a—Miss Campion—I came this morning—"

Apparently he did not quite know why he came, or at any rate he did not find it easy to say. Lettice spoke again in order to relieve his embarrassment, which she did not understand.

"It is so strange that I should have one of his books in my hand again. You can imagine what a grief it was to him when he had to let them go."

"I am so glad to have restored to you something that was your father's. I want you to give me a great pleasure, Miss Campion. These books—there are not more than forty outside—I want you to have them. They are yours, you know, because they were his, and he ought never to have been deprived of them."

"I could not take them, indeed, Mr. Walcott. You are most kind to think of it, but I could not!"

"Why?"

"That is hardly a reasonable question," she said, with a quiet little laugh. "How could I?"

"I see very well how you could, but why should you not? It will be a good deed, and there is no good deed without a sacrifice."

"And you want to sacrifice these books, which are so valuable!"

"No, it is no sacrifice to me, as I could easily prove to you. Believe that it pleases me, and sacrifice your own feelings by taking them."

"I don't see why you should ask me. It is too great a present to make, and—oh, dear me, I am afraid I do not know how to say what I mean! But if you will give me this one book, with my father's name in it, I will take it from you, and thank you very much for it."

"I shall not be satisfied if I may not send the rest. Miss Campion, I came to say——"

Again he stammered and broke down. Lettice, who thought that he had already delivered himself of his mental burden, was a little startled now, especially as he got up and stood by her chair at the window.

"What a lovely little garden!" he said. "Why, you are quite in the country here. What delightful roses! I—I want to say something else, Miss Campion!"

"Yes," said Lettice, faintly, and doing her best to feel indifferent.

"We have not known each other long, but it seems to me that we know each other well—at any rate that I know you well. Before I met you I had never made the acquaintance of a woman who at the same time commanded my respect, called my mind into full play, and aroused my sympathy. These last few months have been the happiest of my life, because I have been lifted above my old level, and have known for the first time what the world might yet be to me. There is something more I want to say to you. I think you know that I have been married—that my wife is—is no more. You may or may not have heard that miserable story, of my folly, and——"

"Oh, no!" cried Lettice, impulsively. "It is true that Mrs. Hartley told me of the great trouble which fell upon you in the loss of which you speak."

"The great trouble—yes! That is how Mrs. Hartley would put it. And the Grahams, have they told you nothing?"

"Nothing more."

A look as of relief passed across his face, followed by a spasm of pain; and he stood gazing wearily through the window.

"Perhaps they do not know, for I have never spoken of it to anyone. But I want to speak; I want to get rid of some of the wretched burden, and an irresistible impulse has brought me here to you. I am utterly selfish; it is like taking your money, or your manuscripts, or your flowers, or anything that you value, to come in this way and almost insist on telling you my sordid story. It is altogether unjustifiable—it is a mad presumption which I cannot account for, except by saying that a blind instinct made me think that you alone, of all the people in this world, could help me if you would!"

Lettice was deeply moved by various conflicting emotions; but there was no hesitation in the sympathy which went out to meet this strange appeal. Even her reason would probably have justified him in his unconventional behavior; but it was sympathy, and not reason, which prompted her to welcome and encourage his confidence.

"If I can help you—if it helps you to tell me anything, please speak."

"I knew I was not mistaken!" he said, with kindling eyes, as he sat down in a low chair opposite to her. "I will not be long—I will not tell you all; that would be useless, and needlessly painful. I married in haste, after a week's acquaintance, the daughter of a French refugee, who came to London in 1870, and earned a living by teaching his language to the poorest class of pupils. Don't ask me why I married her. No doubt I thought it was for love. She was handsome, and even charming in her way, and for some months I tried to think I was happy. Then, gradually, she let me wake from my fool's paradise. I found—you will despise me for a dupe!—that I was not the first man she had pretended to love. Nay, it was to me that she pretended—the other feeling was probably far more of a reality. Before the year was out she had renewed her intimacy with my rival—a compatriot of her own. You will suppose that we parted at once when things came to this pass; but for some time I had only suspicion to go upon. I knew that she was often away from home, and that she had even been to places of amusement in this man's company; but when I spoke to her she either lulled my uneasiness or pretended to be outraged by my jealousy. Soon there was no bond of respect left between us; but as a last chance, I resolved to break up our little home in England, and go abroad. I could no longer endure my life with her. She had ceased to be a wife in any worthy sense of the word, and was now my worst enemy, an object of loathing rather than of love. Still, I remember that I had a gleam of hope when I took her on the Continent, thinking it just possible that by removing her from her old associations, I might win her back to a sense of duty. I would have borne her frivolity; I would have endured to be bound for life to a doll or a log, if only she could have been outwardly faithful.

"Well, to make a long story short, we had not been abroad more than six weeks when this man I have told you about made his appearance on the scene. She must have written to him and asked him to come, at the very moment when she was cheating me with a show of reviving affection; and I own that the meeting of these two one day in the hotel gardens at Aix-les-Bains drove me into a fit of temporary madness. We quarrelled; I sent him a challenge, and we fought. He was not much hurt, and I escaped untouched. The man disappeared, and I have never seen him from that day to this, but I have some reason to think that he is dead."

He paused for a moment or two; and Lettice could not refrain from uttering the words, "Your wife?" in a tone of painful interest.

"My wife?" he repeated slowly. "Ah yes, my wife. Well, after a stormy scene with her, she became quiet and civil. She even seemed anxious to please me, and to set my mind at rest. But she was merely hatching her last plot against me, and I was as great a fool and dupe at this moment as I had ever been before."

And then, with averted face, he told the story of his last interview with her on the hills beyond Culoz. "I will not repeat anything she said," he went on—it was his sole reservation—"although some of her sentences are burned into my brain for ever. I suppose because they were so true."

"Oh, no!" Lettice murmured involuntarily, and looking at him with tear-dimmed eyes. She was intensely interested in his story, and Alan Walcott felt assured by her face that the sympathy he longed for was not withheld.

"My wound was soon healed," he said when the details of that terrible scene were told; "but I was not in a hurry to come back to England. When I did come back, I avoided as much as possible the few people who knew me; and I have never to this moment spoken of my deliverance, which I suppose they talk of as my loss."

"They think," said Lettice, slowly, for she was puzzled in her mind, and did not know what to say, "that you are a widower?"

"And what am I?" he cried, walking up and down the room in a restless way. "Am I not a widower? Has she not died completely out of my life? I shall never see her again—she is dead and buried, and I am free? Ah, do not look at me so doubtfully, do not take back the sympathy which you promised me! Are you going to turn me away, hungry and thirsty for kindness, because you imagine that my need is greater than you thought it five minutes ago? I will not believe you are so cruel!"

"We need not analyze my feelings, Mr. Walcott. I could not do that myself, until I have had time to think. But—is it right to leave other people under the conviction that your wife is actually dead, when you know that in all probability she is not?"

"I never said she was dead! I never suggested or acted a lie. May not a man keep silence about his own most sacred affairs?"

"Perhaps he may," said Lettice. "It is not for me to judge you—and at any rate, you have told me!"

She stood up and looked at him with her fearless grey eyes, whilst his own anxiously scanned her face.

"I am very, very sorry for you. If I can do anything to help you, I will. You must not doubt my sympathy, and I shall never withdraw my promise. But just now I cannot think what it would be best to do or say. Let me have time to think."

She held out her hand, and he took it, seeing that she wanted him to go.

"Good-bye!" he said. "God bless you for being what you are. It has done me good to talk. When we meet again—unless you write and give me your commands—I promise to do whatever you may tell me."

And with that, he went away.